The Australian payments giant grew out of a Melbourne coffee shop almost a decade ago and became a global player. But is it ready for prime time?
It’s the start-up that grew out of a Melbourne coffee shop almost a decade ago and became a global payments giant. Now Airwallex has bigger ambitions, including a listing in New York or Hong Kong., an enigmatic figure and one of four founders who dreamt up Airwallex after encountering payment problems at TukkCo, a cafe they ran across the road from Docklands Stadium, the company has plenty of heavyweight backers.
Zhang declined a request for an interview and an Airwallex spokesman did not comment on specific allegations in response to written questions. Another, a member of the Airwallex board, says the company is well aware it underinvested in its employees in the early years. It is turning the ship around, they say. The leadership, including Zhang, has worked on the right way to raise issues with staff.Many others, however, say the high-pressure environment and oppressive atmosphere identified years earlier has not changed.
“[The] highest employee turnover [is] in support functions . [There is] relatively high turnover ratio for commercial and operations team due to effort to increase talent density,” the presentation reads. Suspicions only grew last year when Dinghua Liu, an Airwallex customer experience and operations executive, left her calendar accessible to staff. Liu, a former BCG consultant based in Beijing before joining the company in 2019, had allocated time last September to “schedule a team to put glassdoor comments”. That detail made its way around the office.Airwallex says it does not direct staff to post on Glassdoor, but it was common practice for companies to respond to inaccurate reviews.
Still, the documents filed in the Cayman Islands give the most detailed insight yet into Airwallex’s earliest shareholders, the majority of which were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands or China. Since that time, Airwallex has expanded its shareholder register. Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital piled in two Series D rounds; one that raised $US40 million in September 2020 and another that raised $US100 million in March 2021. Cannon-Brookes’ Grok only participated in the latter. Neither have participated in the three fundraising rounds since then.
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